Students as scholars: academic development and the scholarship of teaching and learning

As academic developers we are holding a multiplier role when it comes to enhancing learning and teaching, and in encouraging our colleagues to develop their own scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). We will show how we build a bridge between our students as teaching-focused academics and SoTL, in a course within the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP, University of Glasgow). The ‘Designing Active Pedagogies’ course aims to raise our students’ awareness of the importance of space and place with an aspiration to promote active learning. The delivery of the course was dialogic in nature. We developed a theoretical model, offered as a discursive framework within which students could situate their own academic practice. For example, the three main units focused on digital storytelling, object-based learning, and learning landscapes, explored from different disciplinary backgrounds (Lysaker and Furuness, 2011). For the course assignment, students were required to reflect in a scholarly way on their experiences through the production of a digital teaching artefact. The course culminated in a joint presentation about their teaching innovations to our annual learning and teaching conference, and we are in the process of a co-authoring an associated SoTL paper. Lysaker, J.T. and Furuness, S. 2011. Space for Transformation: Relational, Dialogic Pedagogy. Journal of Transformative Education 9(3) 183-197.